


i've got termites in the framework ; so do you

by singagainsoon



Series: "The Things That Stay" 'verse [2]
Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Hermann is sad, M/M, angsty, i am sad, its just, its short and a oneshot but, we are all sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-02
Updated: 2018-04-02
Packaged: 2019-04-17 04:49:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14181039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singagainsoon/pseuds/singagainsoon
Summary: hermann was always a man of routine, of order, of careful, clean-cut lines; but what good is routine without someone to share it with?post-war, pre-PRU oneshot.





	i've got termites in the framework ; so do you

Hermann cannot pinpoint the exact moment he begins allowing his orderly stacks of paper to devolve into towers collapsing, folding in on themselves, crumbling across his desk, spilling onto the ground. Cups stand, empty and used, like stoic sentinels among the wreckage. Still, he knows where everything is as though he placed it there with precise intention instead of haphazard disregard. Logically, he knows that it is a gradual process like most things are, but that does not stop it from hitting him full force as he stands in the doorway of his lab one morning.

It feels almost like loneliness, like waking in a cold sweat in the dark and reaching beside him for what he knows will be empty air.

The sorry state of his workplace is hardly foreign, however. It is as if Newt himself had come tearing back through the lab, a tornado of wild gestures and frantic, excited energy, and left the place a disaster (vibrant, brilliant, alive) in his wake. That scenario, he thinks, would have been preferable. At least then, there might have still been some life hanging low from the rafters. It is silent these days, all except for the scratching of chalk against the chalkboard or the idle pen tapping he had picked up from his colleague. Ages ago, in another lifetime, it was only quiet if something terrible was about to happen, if some mischief loomed present in the air.

Instead of allowing himself a small smile at the thought, he stifles it with a hearty swig of his coffee and braces himself against the support of his cane. Gottlieb never used to drink coffee - least of all, black coffee - but then again, he also used to sleep through the night. Back to the empty shell of the lab, the messy numbers slanting gradually downward across the chalkboard, layers and layers of his life scattered in heaps around him. Back to the normal he can never manage to adjust to. Even his work here in the lab was changed for good, changing by the day in ways that crept on him like the slow inch of a late sunset. Bits of Newton have rubbed off on him, stuck to the sleeves of his sweater and collected there for everyone else to see. What they do not see are the fragments that have splintered in his mind, the visceral things that live behind his eyelids even when he is awake.

In the time that slips away from him, the moments during the day that he cannot account for no matter how hard he tries, Hermann wonders what happens to him. Is his consciousness tiptoeing some shaky line, reaching trembling fingers into the void in desperate search of a hand to hold?

_Does Newtown feel it too?_

If what Newt experiences, wherever he is, is anything at all like this, Hermann hopes against hope that he does not. But he has to - they have been inside each other’s heads, after all. Part of him believes - wishes - that they have never really left each other. The thought of Newt, alone wherever he was, is agony enough to splinter Gottlieb’s heart. Hermann no longer knows where he ends and Dr. Geiszler begins. Everything he thought belonged to him has been scrambled, wires pulled and shorted, circuits sparking, and other people have started to notice. Perhaps they have _always_ noticed. He avoids them entirely, holes up in the lab until the ungodly hours of the morning. There is important work to be done, always.

They had offered to find a replacement, to ease some perceived load, but Hermann would rather have burnt the lab to the ground than see someone else in it. The pain of settling into the space alone was excruciating, but the mere thought of having to adapt to a new occupant was unbearable. The lab was haunted by papers that would never be co authored, walls sagging inward with the collection of tinny notes that Hermann once had loathed, the sounds of good-natured arguments that had seeped into the framework. He would have pulled it apart with his bare hands if it meant salvaging any minuscule scrap of what he had lost.

He hears the other scientists as they pass the lab, weave in and out of the halls around him. "Don't go in there," they mutter, "Dr. Gottlieb's in another one of his moods." Some days, the lab feels more like a funeral parlor, the scene of a tragedy left in indefinite stasis. He never did have the heart to remove the tape dividing the room.

Even in the shell of what was once quite a lively apartment, Hermann finds no rest. How can he? To close his eyes is to surrender to the things that haunt his fatigue-addled brain. It is too quiet in the apartment for the chaos between his ears. He hated them once, but now he finds that the background chatter of old B-rated movies brings him some small scrap of comfort, cheesy dialogue now as near and dear to him as some well-treasured friend. Cast in the harsh blue illumination of the television, an actress feigns a scream, and he reaches into the Drift. On occasion, there is a faint beating in the back of his mind, a fluttering like moth’s wings against his skin, the nearly imperceptible ripples of a heart tied to his own. Hermann would know it even at the very end of the world; in those last catastrophic moments, it would be the only thing he would want to feel short of Newton's hand on his own.

He leans into it, conjuring a companion with which to share the burden.

**Author's Note:**

> the title comes from the mountain goats's "fault lines". i've never written anything for PR before but! here we go.
> 
> @timothyspalls || twitter


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